StarControl: Origins

Two questions:

1) When did you start this save game instance exactly?

2) Did you try going through the support FAQ here?

Hi,

Started Playing Dec 24th, shows only about 16 saves, though I have saved many more times than that.

Dec 29th is when the problems began where any attempt to land on a new planet locks up.

I have done steam verify repair to no avail, uninstall, reinstall also no success.  As mentioned trying to load any of my saved games results in same lockup only when landing on a new planet.  new test, starting a new game actually fails when you finally get to the screen where the woman starts chatting with you.  Her image does not appear and it locks up.

I have the game on the lowest graphics settings already since I started playing.  As a troubleshooting step, attempts to update  graphics driver (as in let windows 10 find it) and that caused the game to not even launch with that driver. I went directly to intel to get the most current UHD 630 driver and then I could launch the game again but still get the lockup.  I also tried using the recommended low graphics settings.ini file, also no change.

I am now looking for a more thorough removal process on this forum.

I have more then 300gb left of the 512gb ssd drive.

Here are my specs.

Windows 10

Intel i7 8700k (6 cpu) 3.7 Ghz

16 GB RAM

Samsung 970 PRO SSD

Motherboard Asus ROG Maximus X Hero

Graphics: onboard Intel UHD Graphics 630

Intel UHD Graphics 630

Intel will have an optimized graphics driver soon after launch, but we don't see any significant improvements (beyond HDCP 2.2 support for DP 1.2a) to the Gen 9 LP (Low Power) engine. We still get subslices with eight EUs each (totaling 24 EUs in a GT2 configuration), accelerated slightly by a 50 MHz maximum frequency increase across the board.

The biggest change comes from Intel's marketing department, which "upgraded" the High Definition (HD) Graphics 630 brand to Ultra High Definition (UHD) Graphics 630. Apparently, that means the company supports the same legacy VP8 and AVC codecs, HEVC 10-bit decode/encode, VP9 8/10-bit decode, VP9 8-bit encode (no support for VP9 10-bit encode), HDR, and Wide Color Gamut features. The processors now come in 6+2 (i5 and i7) and 4+2 (i3) configurations.

Did you try deleting the ini file, ensuring the page file is big enough and reinstlaling re-distributables?

Yes, I deleted the ini file, it gets rebuilt with the same low graphics settings (lowest pixel count screen size, no shadowing etc).

My 16gb of memory rarely breaks 60%, but I increased my page file from default 3gb to 16gb and it had no effect.  THe runlog says INISettings::DetermineVRAM dedicatedVideoMemory 128MB dedicatedSystemMemory 0MB sharedSystemMemory 8120MB vendorID 8086 deviceID 3e92 

The steam redistributables already reinstalled on my first reinstall of Origins, I know because I wondered why it is was not downloading Origins and I saw it was first redownloading Steam files.

Now, the game will not even start, just hangs at a blank screen.

Hands up.  Not sure why it worked fine for a week and then stopped working after running on successfully on a second computer.

Weird tested my laptop and it works fine now, not as slow either?  New game works, and even saved game works?  As if there was never a problem?  Meanwhile my desktop won't even start Origins.  I am reverting to an older intel graphics UHD 630 driver win64_24.20.100.6194 from 2 years ago vs the new one 24.20.1007584.  The new one has a date of November 2019 as FYI.  Fingers crossed on reboot.

Rebooted and guess what Star Control Origins works fine as if there was never a problem.  So clearly the new intel UHD 630 graphics driver breaks/changes something really important for Star Control Origins software.  Interestingly, whatever driver windows 10 defaulted to also broke the game.   So Nov 2019 24.20.1007584 version broke the game, but an older 24.20.100.6194 works fine.  Now I am not sure why I had the original problem that prompted me to try updating my graphics driver on my desktop.  And why the laptop experienced the same game problems with no changes, and resolved with no changes! I did not reinstall the game on the laptop nor do any troubleshooting.   So that is pretty crazy!  I am not sure what files are synchronizing to the steam cloud, but clearly the updates on my desktop were "synchronized" to my laptop. 

Hope this helps anyone else who might have this problem.  Guessing anyone with a ASUS ROG Maximus Hero X would also have an awesome graphics card to go with it and not be using the onboard intel graphics chip :-) 

So I am happy, everythihg is working again....for now!

Happy to hear it's working again. Yeah Intel drivers might be a little odd. We primarily target nVidia and AMD for obvious reasons. We may need to include this in the support FAQ if it's a regular issue.